Thursday 26 July 2012

Torch relay lights my fire

Today I'm watching the last of the torch relay live an event I've been following ever since it's dramatic arrival at Lands End, through to Birmingham and on, finally now, to London.

I've been involved, on behalf of Hall Green Arts, in supporting two major events in parks in our constituency, and attended a handful of the tens of thousands of Torch relay planning meetings across the UK to coordinate certainly the largest single event I've ever been a part of.


Logistically it is truly incredible - to organise a rolling road block across the 8000 miles it journeyed over 2 months.  Then there's the promotion, marketing, coordinating other events around it, bad weather, the sponsors, safety and security issues...


There have been celebrities, there have been dramatic stunts, all around the raw simplicity and symbolsm of a torch relay.  But that's not what I find most exciting,




As Bruce Forsyth, one of the last torch bearers, put it:


      You can't beat a big crowd getting excited

It's the way it has brought so many people together, to celebrate the olympics.  Whatever that means to each of us, it's likely to be the closest many of us get to it.

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